The Vancouver Art Gallery isn’t the only civic institution that wants to move. The Museum of Vancouver on Thursday announced it will be looking at relocating to a downtown site.

“We’ve been talking about it for a while, but we actually started (to study a possible move) in the last few months,” said the museum’s chief executive, Nancy Noble.

“We want to move because our location is tucked away (in Kitsilano Point), far from the centre of the city. It’s difficult to access, because there’s no public transit to it. And because we share a building with the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, this building is known as the planetarium (and not as a museum).

“We have some space challenges here as well, but primarily (the museum wants to move) because we’ve changed our direction and what we’re trying to accomplish. Being in the heart of the city is really core to that new vision and mission, to hold a mirror up to the city and lead provocative conversations about its past, present and future.”

The museum recently hired AldrichPears Associates to design “a functional program plan” to find out “how much programming space we need.” Once that is determined, the museum will hire an architect to do a site assessment study.

“Hopefully, we can do that close to the end of the year, maybe early next year,” Noble said.

One obvious site would be the current home of the Vancouver Art Gallery, which has a great location at Robson and Hornby, is located in a historical landmark, and would almost double the museum’s current exhibition space — the museum currently has 20,000 square feet of exhibition space, while the VAG has 36,000 sq. ft.

But it is by no means a fait accompli that the museum would get the gallery space, should the VAG move.

“Say we did identify the VAG site, there’s a lot of other groups interested in that, so there will be a lot of conversations going on,” said Noble. “The concert hall people are interested, I’ve seen plans for that. There has been talk of an Asian art museum. There’s a lot of groups that need space, so there will have to be conversations about that.

“I think those will occur before the 2015 deadline (for the VAG to raise 75 per cent of construction costs and secure the Larwill Park site for the proposed new gallery).”

Noble said the museum will look at the possibility of moving into part of the downtown post office, which was recently sold, and will even consider a new museum at the base of a highrise tower.

“I think you (could) start looking at what developments are happening and (see) if there is some opportunity there,” said Noble. “I would certainly look at it, absolutely, if it’s the right location.”

The Vancouver Art Gallery has been adamant about building a stand-alone gallery, but Noble said the museum is open to partnering with another institution at a new site, such as the city archives.

The museum is a non-profit society, while its collection is owned by the City of Vancouver. The museum’s collection is actually much bigger than the VAG’s — the museum has 70,000 items, while the VAG has 9,000.

“We have an enormous collection,” said Noble. “We’re an old institution, — we’ve been around since 1894. The collection reflects that. As a mixed collection — unlike a specific visual arts collection or a specific anthropological collection — we’re mixed, so it’s even bigger as a result.”

Noble would like a new museum to be about 120,000 sq. ft., up from the current 85,000 sq. ft.

Noble cautions any move isn’t going to happen soon. It will probably be a five- to 10-year process.